Robi files for IPO at last
Robi yesterday handed in its application to the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission for the operator's listing on the country's twin bourses, as the long-awaited debut of the second largest mobile phone operator is finally taking shape.
The operator plans to raise Tk 387.74 crore for network expansion in anticipation of revenue-generating opportunities in the areas of Internet-of-Things, home and enterprise.
This will be the second listing of a mobile carrier after Grameenphone, which made its debut on the stock exchange in 2009.
A top executive of Robi, which is the country's second largest mobile carrier with 4.93 crore active subscribers, acknowledged the development but declined to elaborate further.
But in a press conference at their office two weeks ago, Robi's top brass said 10 per cent, or about 52.38 crore, shares will be offloaded.
The face value of the shares will be Tk 10 and there will be no premium.
Of the shares, 38.78 crore will be offered to the public retail and institutional investors in Bangladesh, while the remaining 13.61 crore will be for employees and directors of Robi under the employee share purchase plan.
In total, Tk 523.79 crore would be raised.
Axiata has given Robi two conditions for proceeding with the IPO, according to senior executives of the operator versed in the board room discussions.
Robi's decision to get listed was made public on February 21, when its parent company Axiata, which holds 68.69 percent stakes of the operator, gave it the go-ahead to go for IPO through the fixed price method, according to a posting on Bursa Malaysia.
The operator's preparations though began before that. It has already got the approval of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
Indian Bharti Airtel holds 25 per cent stakes after it sold off its Bangladesh subsidiary to Robi and Japanese NTT Docomo the remaining 6.31 per cent.
All three parties' holdings will be diluted according to the current ratio after the initial public offering, which will be managed by IDLC Investments.
The first condition is thatRobi's corporate tax must be brought down by at least ten percentage points. The operator pays 45 percent corporate tax at present.
At the press conference two weeks ago, Robi's senior executives said they will seek to bring down the corporate tax rate to 30 to 35 per cent; or else there will not be any benefit for the listed company.
Grameenphone got the corporate tax benefit when it got listed. But the government withdrew the benefit a few years ago.
The second condition is withdrawal of the 2 percent minimum income tax on overall revenue that the government has imposed from this fiscal year, Alam said.
"Robi's listing will help Bangladesh's twin bourses to become stronger -- this will be a gift for the country's stock market investors," Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, chief executive officer and managing director of Robi, said at the press conference.
Talks of Robi's listing have been going on since 2013. The government has requested the operator on several occasions to make its debut on the stock exchange.
But Robi put it off on grounds of not logging in profits consistently.
It logged in profits Tk 240.23 crore in 2015 after two years of losses. The operator next saw profits in 2018, after two years straight years of losses.
In 2019, Robi logged in profits of Tk 16.91 crore, down 92.12 per cent from the previous year.
Its earning per share was Tk 0.46 in 2018 and it came down to Tk 0.04 at end of 2019.
The carrier started its journey in 1997 under the brand name of Aktel, after being incorporated under the Bangladesh Companies Act, 1994 as a public company limited by shares on October 12, 1995 under the name of Telekom Malaysia International (Bangladesh).
On May 28, 2009, the name of the company was changed to Axiata (Bangladesh) and subsequently on 19 August 2010, the company assumed its present name, Robi Axiata.
At present, Robi's authorised share capital is Tk 6,000 crore and its paid-up capital is Tk 4,714 crore.
And its net asset value per share was Tk 12.64 in 2019, down from Tk 12.85 a year earlier.
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